Artist’s personality matched his work

Published: Thursday, September 6, 2007 at 3:30 a.m.

Last Modified: Wednesday, September 5, 2007 at 11:00 p.m.

The public memorial service today for Jimmy Lee Sudduth is sure to be packed. The service, to be held at 5 p.m. at the Fayette Civic Center and Art Museum, will offer one more chance for people to feel close to Sudduth, who had a magnetic personality.

Sudduth, who died Sunday at 97 at Fayette Medical Center, once said, “I’m easy to find. I’m in the center of the universe." It was an expression not of pride but of pleasure that so many people from around the world were drawn to his work.

Mud paint on plywood was Sudduth’s claim to fame. But while many loved his artwork, it was his contagious spirit of enthusiasm that caught the hearts of most admirers.

The results of Sudduth’s nine decades of painting -- he began at age 3 -- can be seen in collections from the Smithsonian Institution in the nation’s capital to his hometown Fayette Art Museum.

Sudduth liked to tell people that he could identify 36 different shades of mud around his Fayette home, and recalled drawing in the mud even as a child.

It was his mother who encouraged his art, after, on a walk one day, Sudduth stumbled on the idea to paint with mud. Later he would add colors from berries and other natural objects to his painter’s palette.

As his fame grew, especially with the folk-art boom of the ’80s, Kentuck patrons would descend on Sudduth’s truck, which was brimming with new paintings. Often, he provided a musical backdrop on harmonica.

Sudduth, in declining health, stopped appearing at the festival about three years ago but his star was flying higher than ever. The Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts mounted a major exhibit of his work in 2005, with a concurrent hardcover book, “The Life and Art of Jimmy Lee Sudduth," written by curator Susan Mitchell Crawley.

Probably the largest single collection of Sudduth’s work is at the Fayette Art Museum, with pieces donated by the artist as well as residents proud of their local hero.

Sudduth’s folksy nature belied his true artist’s eye, and much of the world saw him as a character from a book about the Deep South. But those who knew him could tell anyone that the molasses Sudduth mixed with the mud he used for paintings was a sweet as spending time with him could be.

He will be missed by family, friends, artists and the entire West Alabama community.

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